We used to write articles on Obuasi and the Northern part of Ghana for publication in some leading news websites both local and international. The idea of creating one of the finest websites for the three Northern Regions came to mind and Northerngh.com was born in March 2015.
The team did it’s best to get news stories on only Northern Ghana and also wrote articles and stories in our own which had massive endorsement from indigence far and near.
Northerbgh.com provided in-depth write-ups pertaining to the to the day to day issues confronting the savannah rich area.
Obuasitoday.com
The craze to see Obuasi to become a better place saw Northerngh.com being flooded with lot of stories from Obuasi and its environs.
We said to ourselves,”Obuasi must go online”; and indeed, we did our best to get the domain for Obuasitoday.com.
My laptop charger got burnt so I had to be writing all the stories we need to publish manually, yes! We planned launching the website in November, so we were doing all what we can to get enough stories before the launch.
I went around departments and agencies for stories and a times we did call some of the heads of departments for stories. We combed the whole municipality to look out for news worthy items and penned them down for 23/11/2015.
we had an interesting encounter with the former Municipal Fire Service Commander when I went there for statistics on fire outbreaks, with no press card or letter. The man who claimed he had a Journalism background went wild on us, asking what we needed the info for and who sent us? I told him, we were harmless and just wanted to support the service.
“Social media people, you sniff around for stories and put them on social media and collect fans from the public, my friend you are dealing with National Security people; sit down and relax, I will attend to you after my lunch”, the stern looking snr Fire officer said.
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Launch
The D-day got closer, it was on the 22nd November, myself, Co-Founders Charles Santog Wundengba and Genevieve Amponsah had to load all the stories before Monday 23rd November.
The interesting part of our launch was the virtual nature of it, yes, we didn’t have enough funds for renting a hall and all other things that accompanied it. So we had to think deep and suggested we launch it online. But how feasible is it?
We spoke to key dignitaries in the Municipality to send us the speeches they would’ve read, if it was been organized in a hall; they did and we used those stories as our opening stories.
Thanks to Mr. Richard Kojo Ellimah, our mentor and Executive Director for Center for Social Impact Studies (Cesis) who wasn’t in Ghana then, but gave us his office to be used for our all night work.
We bought some cowbell coffees, bread, chewing gum and sachet water for the all night.
A lot of people were expectant of what was about hitting Obuasi on 23rd November, 2015, so we made sure there were no errors at all.
We forgot to get any mosquito repellant so the mosquitoes really had a feast but they found it difficult to bite the passion in us.
We finally went online at 12am 23rd November, 2015. It was the birthday of the only lady among the team, Genevieve Amponsah.
News
90% of our news items are locally based with radio stations in the municipality being our main source of news together with other confidential news sources.
We’ve covered a lot of sensitive news items; from the partial closure of the Obuasi mine, the mammoth demonstration of small scale miners, municipal Assembly happenings among others.
We do in-depth analysis on politics, local economy, Municipal Budget analysis and Entertainment.
Obuasi is on the World Wide Web because of Obuasitiday.com and we still going on
Online Radio
In July, 2016, we started streaming Obuasi events to our online listeners. The reception has been great so far. Our greatest challenge now is sponsorship to provide 24/7 streaming and hosting live discussions.
On behalf of our hardworking team members, we pledge to continue going the extreme to bring the news closer to everyone.